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Hi there, hope you're having a great Friday!
All the links in our last email were broken so we're gonna give this another shot - apologies! (and thanks to Rodolfo for the heads up!)
This is Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus, with a handpicked weekly roundup of eCommerce articles.
We are continuing our series of posts covering popular WooCommerce hosts. Previously we took a close look at Cloudways, and this week it's the turn of SiteGround.
SiteGround have always been a reliable performer and his review takes in their 'GoGeek' plan which includes the ability to create one-click staging sites, a must-have feature for WooCommerce stores.
As well as staging, you get SSL, out-of-the-box caching, Cloudflare CDN, and a web application firewall (WAF) that works to prevent exploits, injections, and XSS attacks.
See how it performed with our Shoptimizer WooCommerce theme and our general thoughts in this in-depth review.
Take a look at our SiteGround review
I came across this post which summarizes some of the best practices stores should be thinking about when it comes to their homepage designs.
Some of these are quite obvious but there are some to ponder, such as displaying categories outside of your menu - and to ditch sliders and display a static image. It's a subject I've written about in the past.
Using a chat widget can cause severe speed issues if not implemented correctly so it's important to weigh up any advantages with potential pitfalls.
Take a look at 9 homepage best practices for conversions
If you run a subscription-based eCommerce store this article is an interesting perspective on how brands need to work harder to win customers back.
Subscription e-commerce has grown by more than 100% over the past five years. In 2020 alone, subscription business sales were up by a 12% average. However, nearly 40% subscribers have canceled subscriptions and the churn rates for businesses in this space are incredibly high.
This piece looks at some ways to help reduce churn. One option are text messages carefully timed to when it's predicted a subscriber might need a refill.
Text messages from brands see 13 times more engagement from customers than emails do, so it's certainly something to look at if you're in this space.
See how you can retain subscribers and reduce churn
Founded by two brothers from Tipperary in Ireland, Stripe has grown to become one of the most valuable companies in the world, worth $95 billion.
If you run an eCommerce store you'll almost certainly be familiar with Stripe as it's an extremely popular payment gateway. The goal was to make adding payment infrastructure to a website or app as easy and developer-friendly as possible.
The company’s Atlas product goes one step further: for a flat $500 fee, Stripe will literally set up a company for you, filing the legal paperwork, opening a US bank account, and issuing stock to the founders.
Read more about Stripe's rise and rise
Finally this week I enjoyed this thoughtful piece by Ben Hoyt about how small, lighter pieces of software are beautiful. This breaks up this concept into four elements.
- Fewer moving parts. It’s easier to create more robust systems and to fix things when they do go wrong.
- Small software is faster.
- Reduced power consumption. This is important on a “save the planet” scale, but also on the very local scale of increasing the battery life of your phone and laptop.
- The light, frugal aesthetic.
He describes learning to program with only 16KB of RAM. Some of our older readers might remember those days when you had to make every byte count.
See how the small web is beautiful
Latest Shoptimizer Updates
If you've been using our Shoptimizer WooCommerce theme, we pushed an update this week in version 2.3.8. See everything on the theme's changelog page.
That's it for this edition. Simply reply to this email if you have any questions or suggestions, we read every message. Have a great week and best of luck with your projects!
Colm and Simon from CommerceGurus
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